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Hospital wants to pull the plug on inhumanely neglected 23-year-old woman who is not brain dead

Published

1 year ago

8 minute read

From LifeSiteNews

By Heidi Klessig, M.D.

Montefiore Hospital in Brooklyn is neglecting Amber Ebanks, but experts who have seen the student say her body is functioning and that she could improve with proper treatment.

Amber Ebanks, a 23-year-old Jamaican business student, drove herself to Montefiore Hospital in the Bronx for elective surgery on July 30. But her procedure went awry, leading to an intraoperative stroke and brain swelling that worsened over time. Now, her family is fighting for Amber’s life while the hospital wants to pull the plug.

In February, Amber was found to have a ruptured arteriovenous malformation (AVM), a tangle of abnormal arteries and veins in her brain. Thankfully, after the rupture she was able to return to life as normal. Her doctors recommended that she undergo an embolization procedure to clot off the abnormal blood vessels in her brain in hopes of preventing further rupturing and brain damage. Unfortunately, during the embolization procedure, one of the major arteries supplying blood to Amber’s brain was unintentionally occluded, and her procedure was also complicated by a type of bleeding around the brain called a subarachnoid hemorrhage. Thus, she was taken to the ICU, placed in a medically induced coma, and treated for brain swelling.

Just 10 days later, on August 9, her doctors declared her to be “brain dead.” But there were problems with this diagnosis. The Determination of Death statute in New York and the Uniform Determination of Death Act (UDDA) both state:

“An individual who has sustained either:

  1. irreversible cessation of circulatory and respiratory functions; or
  2. irreversible cessation of all functions of the entire brain, including the brain stem, is dead.”

Amber Ebanks meets neither the first nor the second of these criteria. Her circulatory and respiratory functions continue: her heart is still beating, and her lungs are absorbing oxygen and releasing carbon dioxide. And she does not have the irreversible cessation of all functions of her brain, since she is maintaining her own body temperature, which is a brain function.

Moreover, the new 2023 American Academy of Neurology brain death guideline indicates that metabolic derangements such as high serum sodium levels may confound a brain death evaluation. According to Dr. Paul Byrne, Amber’s sodium levels were very high prior to her brain death determination, with readings over 160meq/L (normal sodium levels range from 135-145 meq/L). Not only can high sodium levels cause abnormal brain functioning, but they can also cause blood vessels in the brain to rupture, causing more brain bleeding – the very problems that Amber’s doctors should be interested in preventing. Also, even though high levels of carbon dioxide are known to exacerbate brain swelling, her doctors have not been checking these levels or adjusting her ventilator settings to prevent such derangements.

In addition to her ongoing heart, lung, and brain functions, Amber has continuing liver and kidney function. And presumably she still has digestive function, even though the hospital has been refusing to feed her since she came in for her surgery on July 30th. A patient cannot be expected to improve neurologically without nutrition.

Not only is Montefiore Hospital refusing to feed Amber, it’s refusing to provide her with basic wound care and hygiene. When Dr. Byrne, a board-certified pediatrician and neonatologist and brain death expert, flew to New York to see Amber this past week, Amber’s sister Kay showed him a maggot she had removed from her sister’s hair. Referring to hospital personnel, Kay Ebanks said in an ABC News article, “They are some of the cruelest people I have ever known.” Most of Amber’s family lives in Jamaica, and her father has been struggling to get a visa in order to come and see his daughter. Meanwhile, the hospital actually suggested that family members say goodbye to her over the phone.

Dr. Byrne and Dr. Thomas M. Zabiega, a board-certified psychiatrist and neurologist, have both evaluated Amber’s case. They have submitted sworn affidavits that Amber Ebanks is alive, and believe that she has decreased blood flow to her brain causing a quietness of the brain known as Global Ischemic Penumbra (GIP). During GIP, the brain shuts down its function to save energy, but the brain tissue itself remains viable. Drs. Byrne and Zabiega recommend additional time and treatment such as adjusting Amber’s sodium and carbon dioxide levels and treating hormonal deficiencies. They have testified that with proper medical treatments she is likely to continue to live and may obtain limited to full recovery of brain functions, even possibly recovering consciousness.

Nevertheless, doctors at Montefiore Hospital are adamant that Amber is “brain dead” and want to disconnect her from her ventilator over the objections of her family. Despite the testimony of qualified doctors and experts, the judge assigned to her case is requiring that a New York-licensed physician be found to evaluate Amber and give testimony about her condition. Until then, Amber remains unfed, uncared for, and neglected in an American hospital, to the point of her sister having to remove vermin from her hair.

Amber Ebanks is very much alive despite receiving little to no ongoing treatment to assist with the healing of her brain. She does not meet the medical or legal criteria for death. All she needs are proper ventilator therapy, a balancing of her fluids and electrolytes, nutrition via a feeding tube, and hormonal replacement: treatments that are commonplace in medicine today. It is shameful that her family has had to beg for these treatments and even go to court to try to force the hospital to provide them.

Heidi Klessig, MD is a retired anesthesiologist and pain management specialist who writes and speaks on the ethics of organ harvesting and transplantation. She is the author of “The Brain Death Fallacy” and her work may be found at respectforhumanlife.com.

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All 12 Vaccinated vs. Unvaccinated Studies Found the Same Thing: Unvaccinated Children Are Far Healthier

Published on December 25, 2025

By

By Nicolas Hulscher, MPH

I joined Del Bigtree in studio on The HighWire to discuss what the data now make unavoidable: the CDC’s 81-dose hyper-vaccination schedule is driving the modern epidemics of chronic disease and autism.

This was not a philosophical debate or a clash of opinions. We walked through irrefutable, peer-reviewed evidence showing that whenever vaccinated and unvaccinated children are compared directly, the unvaccinated group is far healthier—every single time.

Click here to see the video

Reanalyzing the Largest Vaccinated vs. Unvaccinated Birth-Cohort Study Ever Conducted

At the center of our discussion was our peer-reviewed reanalysis of the Henry Ford Health System vaccinated vs. unvaccinated birth-cohort study (Lamerato et al.)—the largest and most rigorous comparison of its kind ever conducted.

The original authors relied heavily on Cox proportional hazards models, a time-adjusted approach that can soften absolute disease burden. Even so, nearly all chronic disease outcomes were higher in vaccinated children.

Our reanalysis used direct proportional comparisons, stripping away the smoothing and revealing the full magnitude of the signal.

  • All 22 chronic disease categories favored the unvaccinated cohort when proportional disease burden was examined
  • Cancer incidence was 54% higher in vaccinated children (0.0102 vs. 0.0066)
  • When autism-associated conditions were grouped appropriately—including autism, ADHD, developmental delay, learning disability, speech disorder, neurologic impairment, seizures, and related diagnoses—the vaccinated cohort showed a 549% higher odds of autism-spectrum–associated clinical outcomes

The findings are internally consistent, biologically coherent, and concordant with every prior vaccinated vs. unvaccinated study, all of which show drastically poorer health outcomes among vaccinated children

The 12 Vaccinated vs. Unvaccinated Studies Regulators Ignore

In the McCullough Foundation Autism Report, we compiled all 12 vaccinated vs. unvaccinated pediatric studies currently available. These studies span different populations, countries, study designs, and data sources.

Every single one reports the same overall pattern. Across all 12 studies, unvaccinated children consistently exhibit substantially lower rates of chronic disease, including:

  • Autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders
  • ADHD, tics, learning and speech disorders
  • Asthma, allergies, eczema, and autoimmune conditions
  • Chronic ear infections, skin disorders, and gastrointestinal illness

This level of consistency across independent datasets is precisely what epidemiology looks for when assessing causality. It also explains why no federal agency has ever conducted—or endorsed—a fully vaccinated vs. fully unvaccinated safety study.

Flu Shot Failure

We also addressed the persistent failure of seasonal influenza vaccination.

A large Cleveland Clinic cohort study of 53,402 employees followed participants during the 2024–2025 respiratory viral season and found:

  • 82.1% of employees were vaccinated against influenza
  • Vaccinated individuals had a 27% higher adjusted risk of influenza compared with the unvaccinated state (HR 1.27; 95% CI 1.07–1.51; p = 0.007)
  • This corresponded to a negative vaccine effectiveness of −26.9% (95% CI −55.0 to −6.6%), meaning vaccination was associated with increased—not reduced—risk of influenza

When vaccination exposure increases, chronic disease, neurodevelopmental disorders, and inflammatory illness increase with it. When children are unvaccinated, they are measurably healthier across virtually every outcome that matters.

The science needed to confront the chronic disease and autism epidemics already exists. What remains is the willingness to acknowledge it.

Nicolas Hulscher, MPH

Epidemiologist and Foundation Administrator, McCullough Foundation

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Alberta

A Christmas wish list for health-care reform

Published on December 23, 2025

By

From the Fraser Institute

By Nadeem Esmail and Mackenzie Moir

It’s an exciting time in Canadian health-care policy. But even the slew of new reforms in Alberta only go part of the way to using all the policy tools employed by high performing universal health-care systems.

For 2026, for the sake of Canadian patients, let’s hope Alberta stays the path on changes to how hospitals are paid and allowing some private purchases of health care, and that other provinces start to catch up.

While Alberta’s new reforms were welcome news this year, it’s clear Canada’s health-care system continued to struggle. Canadians were reminded by our annual comparison of health care systems that they pay for one of the developed world’s most expensive universal health-care systems, yet have some of the fewest physicians and hospital beds, while waiting in some of the longest queues.

And speaking of queues, wait times across Canada for non-emergency care reached the second-highest level ever measured at 28.6 weeks from general practitioner referral to actual treatment. That’s more than triple the wait of the early 1990s despite decades of government promises and spending commitments. Other work found that at least 23,746 patients died while waiting for care, and nearly 1.3 million Canadians left our overcrowded emergency rooms without being treated.

At least one province has shown a genuine willingness to do something about these problems.

The Smith government in Alberta announced early in the year that it would move towards paying hospitals per-patient treated as opposed to a fixed annual budget, a policy approach that Quebec has been working on for years. Albertans will also soon be able purchase, at least in a limited way, some diagnostic and surgical services for themselves, which is again already possible in Quebec. Alberta has also gone a step further by allowing physicians to work in both public and private settings.

While controversial in Canada, these approaches simply mirror what is being done in all of the developed world’s top-performing universal health-care systems. Australia, the Netherlands, Germany and Switzerland all pay their hospitals per patient treated, and allow patients the opportunity to purchase care privately if they wish. They all also have better and faster universally accessible health care than Canada’s provinces provide, while spending a little more (Switzerland) or less (Australia, Germany, the Netherlands) than we do.

While these reforms are clearly a step in the right direction, there’s more to be done.

Even if we include Alberta’s reforms, these countries still do some very important things differently.

Critically, all of these countries expect patients to pay a small amount for their universally accessible services. The reasoning is straightforward: we all spend our own money more carefully than we spend someone else’s, and patients will make more informed decisions about when and where it’s best to access the health-care system when they have to pay a little out of pocket.

The evidence around this policy is clear—with appropriate safeguards to protect the very ill and exemptions for lower-income and other vulnerable populations, the demand for outpatient healthcare services falls, reducing delays and freeing up resources for others.

Charging patients even small amounts for care would of course violate the Canada Health Act, but it would also emulate the approach of 100 per cent of the developed world’s top-performing health-care systems. In this case, violating outdated federal policy means better universal health care for Canadians.

These top-performing countries also see the private sector and innovative entrepreneurs as partners in delivering universal health care. A relationship that is far different from the limited individual contracts some provinces have with private clinics and surgical centres to provide care in Canada. In these other countries, even full-service hospitals are operated by private providers. Importantly, partnering with innovative private providers, even hospitals, to deliver universal health care does not violate the Canada Health Act.

So, while Alberta has made strides this past year moving towards the well-established higher performance policy approach followed elsewhere, the Smith government remains at least a couple steps short of truly adopting a more Australian or European approach for health care. And other provinces have yet to even get to where Alberta will soon be.

Let’s hope in 2026 that Alberta keeps moving towards a truly world class universal health-care experience for patients, and that the other provinces catch up.

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